"I daresay; but come to the point."

"Don't be in a hurry. It is rather hard to express myself. What I mean
is that you had better give up staring."

"Staring? I never stared at you or anyone else, in my life!"

"Stupid Morris! By staring I mean star-gazing, and by star-gazing I mean
trying to get away from the earth--in your mind, you know."

Morris ran his fingers through his untidy hair and opened his lips to
answer.

"Don't contradict me," she interrupted in a full steady voice. "That's
what you are thinking of half the day, and dreaming about all the
night."

"What's that?" he ejaculated.

"I don't know," she answered, with a sudden access of indifference. "Do
you know yourself?"

"I am waiting for instruction," said Morris, sarcastically.

"All right, then, I'll try. I mean that you are not satisfied with
this world and those of us who live here. You keep trying to fashion
another--oh! yes, you have been at it from a boy, you see I have got a
good memory, I remember all your 'vision stories'--and then you try to
imagine its inhabitants."

"Well," said Morris, with the sullen air of a convicted criminal,
"without admitting one word of this nonsense, what if I do?"

"Only that you had better look out that you don't _find_ whatever it is
you seek. It's a horrible mistake to be so spiritual, at least in that
kind of way. You should eat and drink, and sleep ten hours as I do, and
not go craving for vision till you can see, and praying for power until
you can create."

"See! Create! Who? What?"

"The inhabitant, or inhabitants. Just think, you may have been building
her up all this time, imagination by imagination, and thought by
thought. Then her day might come, and all that you have put out
piecemeal will return at once. Yes, she may appear, and take you, and
possess you, and lead you----"

"She? Why she? and where?"

"To the devil, I imagine," answered Mary composedly, "and as you are
a man one can guess the guide's sex. It's getting dark, let us go
out. This is such a creepy place in the dark that it actually makes
me understand what people mean by nerves. And, Morris, of course
you understand that I have only been talking rubbish. I always liked
inventing fairy tales; you taught me; only this one is too grown
up--disagreeable. What I really mean is that I do think it might be a
good thing if you wouldn't live quite so much alone, and would go out
a bit more. You are getting quite an odd look on